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Star Office 6.0 Source Code GPL!
jjr writes "An article over at TechWeb states the date for the release of the source code Star Office 6.0 is on Oct. 13 and it will be released at openoffice.org."
We've been hearing rumors of this for some time now, but I'm still looking for confirmation of the license, but the rumor is that it will be Open Source compliant, and hopefully GPL (especially considering the (well deserved) heat they took over their previous license). Rumors about the license in German. I've also heard that the among the major goals is a GTK port of the suite. Update: 07/19 01:31 PM by CT : It's apparently official: Finally a story in English proclaiming that it will be released under the GPL!
For a moment, let's put the window manager MDI issue aside. It'd take no more than a few hours for someone to simply shut off the 'taskbar' and let StarOffice run in a more conventional MDI model, like ClarisWorks and Opera do. I want to talk about something else.
The real advantage of StarOffice is its tight integration with Java. Despite the fact that it's not written in Java, it can utilize Java in clever ways. And it uses whatever VM you have on your system rather than carrying its own around, which is of course another advantage.
Recently, I was faced with the task of building a small database for a boring corporate type task. While this could have been done in MS Access or whatever, I wanted to go cross-platform, client/server, and 100 percent Microsoft-free. So here's what I ended up doing: MySQL on the back end, and StarOffice Database on the front end. But there's no MySQL support in StarOffice? True, but there is JDBC support. I located a JDBC driver for MySQL, plugged it in, and everything started working. This may not impress anyone until you come to the realization that no platform-dependent code was written!
And therein, I believe, lies the real power of an office suite that is tightly integrated with Java. Java becomes the 'glue' that pulls various pieces of architecture together. Java becomes the scripting language. Java becomes the language to write StarOffice plugins. This is all good stuff, because all third-party StarOffice stuff is automatically platform-independent.
A couple of side notes: I think that two things would benefit StarOffice in the short term: first, the built-in web browser should be an embedded Mozilla 1.0 (when it's eventually released); and second, Sun should get super aggressive about bundling free copies of StarOffice with new PC's -- not just Linux machines, but Windows machines as well. With a free 'good enough' office suite in their hands, many users wouldn't bother spending the 500 bucks on another suite.
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Perhaps the old license was too restrictive in other ways, in order to ensure that only paying members got source? Or did it demand that Sun be assigend copyright on mods? Or was there some other valid complaint? Or was it simply griping that Sun dared release non-free software?
Free software is cool stuff. I write it, and GPL it. But I do not demand that everyone else GPL their stuff. Although I do think that software copyrights should be like patents: short term (say, two to five years); can be renewed once for an additional term; the source is on file; the source becomes available at the expiration of the copyright. This way people can make money for a few years on their work, but we still get the source in the not-so-long-run.
btw, the GPLd version will be v6, which is a complete re-write according so some things I've heard. Apparantly, since the takeover, Sun have quadrupled the number of developers! btw, Sun reps have also clearly stated recently, that even with StarPortal, they expect people to be using the normal StarOffice product for many years.
Also, Sun actually have about 4 'source available' license in use - SCSL, MPL (mozila public license), the "Open Source (tm)" certified one they're using for 'technical' things like the NFS 4 release, and also the license for Solaris. This makes 5. Quite a wide range.
I have it from a pretty decent source that they have a large team of people working on the GTK port (read: multiple dozens of coders), and that they have had that team working on it for some time. So it's not as far fetched as it would seem. Also, for the most part everything will be available as a bonobo component, so you won't have to load the entire thing as one monolithic binary anymore.
According to dpa /stern.de, the license will indeed be the GPL. Way to go, Sun!
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
--Henry Kissinger
The german Heise Newsticker writes that it is GPLd and the official announcement will follow today at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention. It also mentions that Sun has hired Tim O'Reilly, Miguel de Icaza, Brian Behlendorf and Andy Hertzfeld as coordinators for openoffice.org and they will also define "open" XML-based data formats at openoffice.
... with Staroffice as I see it is that it's one huge application. And I mean, HUGE. If I want to work on a spreadsheet, I don't need my Word Processor sitting in memory too. Unfortunately because of the tight integration in StarOffice this is exactly what happens. It kills my 64MB P-II. Gnumeric and AbiWord, although nowhere near as advanced, are at least usable.
It takes SOOOooo long to loead because it implements, among other things, it's own window manager and widgket toolkit. Obviously this is wholly unnecessary but it is a good way to maintain a product across a lot of different platforms, because it's easier to write and maintain a toolkit for each system than port every line of code to it. The downside is that performance suffers a lot. I've heard rumblings of a full-on GNOME port of StafOffice, which will be really wonderful - fast and featureful.
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I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
X used to never crash!, window managers have been falling over for years. Its the source and the freeness to hack the crap out of that said source, stability and so forth is purely icing. XFree86 has had bugs just like everything else, heres the thing though, if you wanted you could fix it, hell if you hadn't the skills you could try to identify when it would happen and help the developers track it down, if you were really into it you could pay a developer to sort it out for you. Even if the original writers had no interest, you could get anyone skilled to do it.
The increased popularity of Linux is great, the naysayers can just bugger off. A strong profile for linux is a strong profile for releasing source, without linux you wouldn't have just gotten 5.3 million lines of source of StarOffice into your laps, what does a little spin to make this announcement accessable to journalists and ordinary investors matter, its the source. And its bloody well GPLed, do you know you awesomely unlikely that is. Its great.
Granted I think that binary only modules for the kernel and so forth are nowhere as good as the real thing, but its a stepping stone along the road for companies to try the waters
This is why Im in this game. Eight years, Ive loved this linux GNU thing. Heres a thought though, how many of you have actually contributed something. Sent in a patch or wrote some code, thats the community, not the gripers about how popular it has become, what kind of mad talk is that.
No matter how it all works out, with linux ventures dissappearing into the sea, or companies bailing out of free software the deeds are done, and the code is there for all or us to play with to our hearts content, and thats what its all about. Hmm, port SO to OpenBSD, go ahead, excellent hack, but its the popularity of linux which you so fear which has created that opportunity. Popularity is a tool, take advantage of it
C.
disclosure: I work for SO
I sometimes write stuff
I hope that as we see all of this commercial attention towards linux, it doesn't lose some of the qualities that have made it so good.
We'll still always have the source to the OS thanks to the GPL. This is great.
Some applications will be free(d), and if they're good enough to be worth it, dedicated hackers will be able to fix bugs in them.
Yet, something tells me that Sun didn't GPL StarOffice out of a sense of community, they did it for buzzword compliance. Press releases riddled with marketspeak phrases like "move forward" and "continued innovation" make me cringe, fearing the worst...
Linux may turn into Windows.
With fancy new GUI "Windows" managers, X has started to crash for me occasionally. X used to never crash! The latest redhat shipped with no fewer than two remote root exploits. It's getting to be a major chore to understand all of the things your system does on boot (3 years ago with slackware, this was easy!)
We're starting to see proprietary drivers available for linux. When we have as many proprietary drivers as Windows does, will we see the same loss of stability?
Linux has less and less become an "underground" (even "subculture" is losing applicability), and sometimes I think this has a negative impact on the OS. I see many of my friends who take that aspect seriously switching to less popular operating systems like OpenBSD or Be.
What do you think? Does this much marketing force and this much code eventually turn a great system mediocre? Will we just end up with another (mostly open source) Windows?
I hope not, but I'm still worried...
Well, lets be honest - MS Office is better than most other products, in terms of value
Have you seen the prices they are charging for it lately? Holy cow, have they ever increased the prices. You can buy WordPerfect Suite or Lotus SmartSuite for a tiny fraction of the price of MS Office. Both of those offer similar functionality, so how is MS Office better in terms of value? Even if it was marginally better (in my opinion, it is worse), is it two or three times better to justify being two or three times the price? Sorry, but value just isn't something that Microsoft is competing on. In terms of value, how is Microsoft going to compete with the new GPLed Star Office? Hard to beat the value of free.
and performance at any rate.
Actually, WordPerfect Suite and Lotus SmartSuite seem to run better on older machines than does MS-Office. Star Office is currently a bit on the slow side, but if they do to it what they claim they are going to, that problem should be history.
Just my 0.02$ worth, Ron.
You are entitled to your opinion. I completely disagree, however.
I will be helping with the BeOS and AtheOS ports, though - a GPL'ed suite like this, even though it's not the best - is a good foot in the door for a startup operating system!
I'm looking forward to the StarView technology itself - a cross platform porting toolkit for OS/2, Windows and X is a good thing!
I sometimes write stuff
My computer at work doesn't have a port of StarOffice. Now it will, and I'll have no excuse for ignoring all those Word-formatted emails from PHBs and their secretaries. Fuck you, Sun!
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